Q: I am a credentialed English teacher with a business providing room, board and two weeks of intensive language lessons to foreigners. It is like a bed and breakfast with daily English classes and activities including tours. How can I promote my business to potential customers overseas?

-- Perplexed in Pleasanton

A: What a great idea for a business. My family and I did something similar several years ago, attending a Spanish language school in Guatemala while living with a local family. It was a wonderful way to learn the language while getting a taste of daily nontourist life.

You face two marketing challenges. One is that your potential clients are thousands of miles away and speak other languages.

The other is a question of scale and budget. Housing one or two students at a time, the maximum number of clients you can serve is 30 to 50 per year. So unlike a larger language school or university program, you don't have the money to buy expensive ads or travel abroad recruiting foreign students.

Given your tight budget, your best bet may be word-of-mouth marketing through past students. If 10 students each refer a friend, you'd fill nearly half the year.

"Quite honestly, how most families choose (a foreign school) is through word of mouth," said Christopher Beeson, admissions director for the Athenian School in Danville, which enrolls 35 international boarding students in its high school.

Give your alumni souvenirs that promote your business such as customized T-shirts. Stay in touch with them through an e-mail newsletter. Offer a small reward -- a coffee table book of California landscape photos? -- if they refer a friend.

Also use your alumni for market research. Ask how they found out about your program. They may be able to identify a dominant travel magazine in their country where even a small ad could bring big results.

Some other ideas:

-- Network with local businesses that have overseas divisions. Multinational corporations like Chevron have foreign managers and spouses who may need to beef up their English. Contact their personnel departments to offer your services.

-- Talk to nearby college and boarding school admissions staff like Beeson. They may know foreign parents who would like to accompany their child to California, and then take a two-week language course themselves.

-- Internet, of course. Talk to a search engine optimization expert about how to make your site show up near the top of Web searches. Consider translating key parts of your site into other languages.

-- Industry associations. Joining the local visitors and convention bureau will let you share referrals and marketing ideas with other travel-related businesses.

-- Government help. The U.S. Commercial Service mostly helps exporters find overseas customers, but it also helps American schools market themselves to foreign students. Although it charges a fee for customized marketing assistance, it can provide some basic advice for free. See export.gov/eac/index.asp to find an office near you.

Q: We had our kitchen remodeled by a small construction company about a year and a half ago. Several months after the job was done, they sent us a bill for $25,000. We were shocked, since we thought we owed them just $12,500 for the final payment. The bill included $1,400 in unexplained electrical work, $2,000 for painting (twice the quote) and a $4,000 design fee even though we designed the kitchen ourselves and had the cabinetmaker do the plans. The contractor said he'd straighten things out. Now, 15 months later, we get a call from his accountant saying we owe $25,000. What can we do to stop this continuing call for money that we don't owe?

-- Bugged in Berkeley

A: This question happens to come from a consumer rather than a small-business owner -- but this kind of billing dispute is often as painful to the owners of small businesses as to their clients.

How can business owners like this contractor avoid ending up in a billing dispute? One key is communication. Nobody likes surprises, especially surprises that result in huge cost increases when everything was supposed to be over and done.

"If you have a problem on the job, let the client know," said Bryant Byrnes an Oakland attorney who specializes in construction law and represents both contractors and clients. "If you wait, it's just going to become more and more of a problem. Clients really appreciate communication."

This contractor may have had good reasons for some of the cost overruns. But even if that were the case, he should have put the changes in writing as the job progressed.

California law requires home remodeling contractors to put all changes to the scope of the job in writing through change orders that are signed by the consumer.

"The burden in this scenario is on the contractor," Byrnes said. "The reason contractors are supposed to use change orders is to avoid exactly the kind of dispute we have here."

To defuse such conflicts, many business contracts include a clause requiring disputes to be submitted to mediation. (See today's Allbusiness.com column for more on mediation and arbitration.)

"A lot of the time, the way to untangle these things is part of the contract itself," Byrnes said.

To the consumer: Your next step in this case should be to put your response to the bill in writing, in a letter to the contractor. Point out that these charges were not in the initial contract and not covered by any change orders.

"Let them know you are a smart customer and know the rules, and if there wasn't a change order, why is it more expensive?" Byrnes said. You can also politely let the contractor know that if the dispute can't be resolved, you'll be forced to file a complaint with the Contractors State License Board. That may motivate them to settle this once and for all.

"Even though the board has a severe problem with manpower, they will investigate most of these things," Byrnes said.

Consumers should always check out the license and record of contractors they're considering hiring, through the Web site of the Contractors State License Board (www.cslb.ca.gov).

Make sure you get a written contract and change orders. The board's site offers guidelines for what should be in a contract.

"If it looks like (the job) will get snarky, start creating a paper trail," Byrnes said. "If you don't get a response to a problem, follow up with a letter or e-mail."